


A Full Moon Over Galway Bay

by EllieL



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Legilimency (Harry Potter), Medical Experimentation, Memory Loss, Memory Magic, Potions Accident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:07:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28428276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieL/pseuds/EllieL
Summary: Hermione Granger is working on a promising new potion; while gathering ingredients for it, she encounters Severus Snape for the first time in many years. When her research takes an unexpected turn, can he provide the solution?
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Severus Snape
Comments: 99
Kudos: 153
Collections: Hearts and Cauldrons Discord Members





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Alpha/Beta assistance from EmiliaVBlake, who helped me figure out exactly where this ended up going.
> 
> This is mostly written, and will be updating weekly.

Hermoine Granger picked her way carefully down to the rocky shoreline. The full moon helped light her way, but not as much as a lumos or a few bluebell flames would have done. She couldn’t risk that here, though, despite the lateness of the hour--this area was all Muggles, so far as she’d been able to tell during her short stay in the village. Instead, she made use of a pair of glasses which looked like perfectly stylish tortoiseshell framed lenses to Muggles, but were spelled to enhance ambient light, so that the moonlight alone would have been nearly enough, if not for the precarious danger of slipping on the algae- and seaweed-covered rocks.

Yet that was the whole reason for her being out at this hour--she needed to harvest some of this carrageenan, at the perigee of a full moon. And the celestial body hung enormous on this cloudless night, reflecting off the rolling waves with a silvery glow. She paused for a moment to appreciate the beauty of the night, before taking the final steps down to the waterline, grateful for the sticking charms on her wellies.

As she did so, she felt the ripple of passing through a ward. She stopped again, evaluating the feeling of it. It had not been protective, not meant to prevent her from travelling along the shore, and was so light as to have been barely discernible, had her magic not already been alert with her darkness-heightened senses. Surely it had been to warn some other witch or wizard of her approach. Curious, since she’d seen no other magical folk here so far.

With even more caution than she’d previously been using to pick her way across the slippery rocks, she made her way across the limestone with one eye to keeping her footing and the other for the presence of someone else. She paused again at an outcropping of stone that held an assortment of tide pools, and decided to remain cautious but focus on the mission she’d come to accomplish. Picking her way around the edges of the tide pools, she studied what she could see of the life within for a moment, wondering if she might also take a few samples from them to assess as well.

A wave crashed over her feet, leaving a hank of seaweed on the toe of her boot, and she leaned down to pick it off and study it. The right variety; perhaps luck would be on her side tonight. She twisted and pulled her larger sample bag to the front of her hip, tucking the piece inside. Ahead, she could see the sheen of a vast heap of fresh seaweed, and took a step towards it.

Just at that moment, a dark shape rose from the periphery of the outcropping. Before she could reach for her wand, or even find her footing, she found herself falling, in spite of the charm on her boots. It wasn’t far to the edge of the water, where waves were lapping, waiting to draw her into the roiling sea.

Yet it was not the sea that she fell into, but magic not her own. It was subtle, enough that perhaps a Muggle wouldn’t notice, but enough to keep her from harm, dropping her down hard on the stone, a safe distance from the edge. The dark figure approached her. _Lumos_ cast a field of light towards her as it drew close, keeping the face in deep shadow.

“What sort of dunderhead walks down here in the middle of the night without aid of illumination? This is not a— Miss Granger?!”

That voice she’d know anywhere, though it had been nearly two decades since she’d heard it. It had lost none of it’s rich timbre and sharp bite.

“Severus Snape?” Cautiously, she rose to her feet, assessing him as well as possible as he stood a few feet away, a darker shadow in the night.

He lowered the bright light of his wand, enough to cast a bit of the glow onto his face. “Miss Granger, why are you out here, ill prepared for the conditions?”

“It’s Mistress Granger, actually. Or Dr. Granger, if you’re a Muggle.” She was no longer a student, and refused to be cowed by his tone. Straightening her magical glasses, she noted his raised eyebrow before continuing, “I came quite prepared for the conditions. I did not expect a hulking dark form to rise from the rocks.”

“Less vigilance than one might expect, given your history, _Mistress_ Granger.” He was still, though she could feel his gaze on her.

She huffed out a laugh. “My recent history has been spent in laboratories. Little risk of attack there. At least of a physical kind.”

“Indeed.” He was silent a long moment, before stepping back and gesturing at the rocky tide pools. “You are here for research?”

“I am,” she said, taking a step away from the edge of the rocks and studying him. His posture relaxed, he was less physically intimidating in his own wellies and waxed canvas coat, an ingredient bag slung across him like a bandolier. Did he know something more than she’d been able to glean from books about the properties of ingredients harvested here, under the full moon? “You’re harvesting ingredients.”

“Obviously.” At the edge of one of the tide pools, he reached down and carefully extracted an urchin, then studied it a moment before placing it in his bag. 

“Why? Here and now, specifically?”

He looked back up from the tide pool, and even without the aid of her enhanced lenses, she would have been able to see the scowl on his face. “That’s none of your concern.”

“Just trying to engage in a little professional discussion.” She was certain his work was professional as hers; she knew some of the work he’d been doing as a consultant with the hospital these past years, and read his articles with interest even if she never spoke to the man himself. Seeing him here, where she was collecting for her own research was so intriguing she couldn’t hold her tongue, but she felt unable to resist the jab. “Or are you shell collecting? Gathering sushi ingredients?”

“What would it be if not professional? Who in their right might would be out here at three in the morning for fun?”

She couldn’t help the laugh that escaped her, even if it sent him a few steps farther away. Shaking her head, she studied the seaweed at her feet, picking up a piece in each hand to examine. There were several species in the waters here, and she needed to concentrate on finding the right one; different properties would be present in each even if they might appear similar, and it would not do to muck up this round of brewing by using different types in each batch. 

Tucking the correct variety into her sample satchel, she looked up to see Snape studying her in the moonlight. She ignored the temptation to explain herself, and resolved to ignore him unless he addressed her more civilly. With another shake of her head, she turned away from him and approached a heap of seaweed sprawled across sharp rocks at the edge of the outcropping. 

It was difficult to ignore him and get on with her own work, as she could feel his gaze on her at times, even felt the cool press of attempted legilimency. That was rebuffed easily enough, and she might have heard a huff of surprise at that, over the wash of the waves. When she’d finished gathering what seemed a sufficient quantity of seaweed to her requirements, she began to pick her way back across the slippery rocks. The dark form of Severus Snape didn’t move as she passed, though she knew he was watching her go. 

Before stepping back down onto the wet sand, she called back over her shoulder, “Goodnight, Master Snape.”

If there was any answer at all, it was lost to the wind and waves.

  
  
  


She nearly forgot about Severus Snape as she returned to the cottage she’d rented for the weekend. Instead, her attention was focused on preparing and storing the various carrageenan samples, filling a dozen different jars with what she was hoping would be they key ingredient in her new therapy. Then, unused to late nights, she fell into the somewhat lumpy but very warm bed, and slept til well past dawn. By the time she packed up and headed back to London the next afternoon, all her thoughts were focused on the work ahead, the faintest note in the back of her mind to be on the lookout for Snape’s name in the potions journals.

Her lab at St. Mungo’s was everything a researcher, magical or muggle, could dream of—stainless counters, rows of uniform glass containers, burners and crucibles and cauldrons of all shapes and sizes, hot and cold storage, and the latest computers. Two treatment rooms to the front, set up like homey cottage bedrooms, so that patients could be comfortable and safe. Every morning she walked into it, even five years on, she couldn’t quite believe her good fortune in being granted an extensive refurbishing budget when she’d taken over the Memory Division from Harold Orpington, allowing her to outfit the lab to her own standards. It was a stark contrast to much of St. Mungo’s, which often looked as if it were still stuck, along with much of wizarding society, in the 19th century.

The entire floor was quiet on a Sunday afternoon, allowing her to work quickly to set the seaweed to dry, and to ferment, and to stew. She was back out of the office before lunch, studiously ignoring the pile of inter-office mail that was waiting for her attention. She’d just incinerate most of it in the morning anyway. On returning home, she treated herself to some of the seaweed-utilizing ice cream she’d also brought home, tucking in with a generous bowl as she read through her notes once more, in preparation for beginning this round of brewing.

Several trials had already found her the base potion she needed to compliment therapy and restore memories from botched Obliviations. But she just knew the potion could be better, more efficacious, if the seaweed was different. She’d tried varying varieties, varying sources, varying harvest time, and had now focused on in varying preparations of carrageenan harvested at the full moon, which had proved to be most effective thus far. The team had to be on the cusp of a breakthrough, the potion getting better and better with each refinement and reformulation.

Monday morning, her team got right to work with her freshly prepared carrageenan. Once the proper potion had been created, it had been a shock to realize that it wasn’t a particularly complicated one to brew; even her fresh-from-Hogwarts assistant technicians would be able to brew it once they’d found the exact formulation they needed. This round they were making three batches, one fresh, one dried, and one fermented. By afternoon, they’d be ready to bring in several long-term patients from the Janus Thickey ward who had either volunteered or been enrolled in the trials by their families. Several new patients had been enrolled in this round of trials, after the promising results of the last; Hermione was hoping this would be the final round before they began more extensive long-term testing of the final potion, and began more therapy integration as well. 

She prepared the potion using the dried carrageenan, while Brennan worked on the fresh version and Malik handled the fermented iteration. The dried seaweed integrated well to the established potion recipe--it was one of the two versions they’d previously used, before deciding to add the fermented version this go round. Focusing on her task made the memory potion easy work as she stirred the final eight anticlockwise turns, watching the potion thin and change from deep green to turquoise. Withdrawing the silver stirring rod, she turned the burner off and moved the silver cauldron off to cool before decanting the liquid. Only then did she turn to her team to see how their work was going; the fresh potion was nearly done as well, but had turned aquamarine rather than turquoise. The fermented batch, however, was taking longer to reduce, and remaining a dark, forest green; only after a dozen stirs did it thin and lighten to a lime color.

Everyone in the lab studied the nine bottles of potions once they were decanted; the bottles would need to be put in a randomizer before the trial began, so that no one knew which potion they were working on the patient with. Brennan took care of placing the vials into the machine that would magically darken the glass and shuffle the vials while Malik helped Hermione get the treatment rooms ready. They’d found it best if the patients were relaxed, so they had them sit down for tea, giving the potion in a delicate china cup as something of an aperitif. Then they could chat with the patient as an assessment of their mental state after dosing. It had become a pleasant ritual for all involved, especially once they started to see good progress.

Hermione had three patients this go round. Her first was her favorite, Etheldra Leighton, an elderly witch who had begun to lose her memory due to age, not spell damage. She’d been a mediwitch at St. Mungo’s before her retirement thirty years ago at the age of ninety, and had continued to volunteer on the pediatric ward. When she’d been informed of the study by one of her colleagues, she’d enrolled eagerly and had been seeing good results. Hermione had come to think of her as a good baseline for what the potion could help with in the average case, and even if it only helped in cases of wizarding dementia, it would be an amazing breakthrough, though she was hoping it would be able to do much more. They spent half an hour conversing about some of Etheldra’s more interesting cases on the Spell Damage ward over the years, and Hermione was delighted at her progress.

The next patient was new, referred to the study by the current Spell Damage ward when a burst of spontaneous magic from his toddler had left him with no memory of the child. It had been a tragic case that they were all hopeful their work could help with, and Hermione looked over her notes on the case one more time as Arnold Tamworth entered the room and sat down, wearing the powder blue robes of a St. Mungo’s patient and looking rather glum.

“How’re you doing today, Arnold?”

“I’ve been better, Ma’am. Is it tea time already?”

“If you’d like a cup. Though perhaps you’d like to try this while I pour you one?” She offered him a cup with a wave motif around the rim, containing the potion. The cups had been spelled so the researchers couldn’t see the color, and thus tell which version of the potion they were working with.

The man politely took the cup from her, staring at it for a moment, then seemed explode, his face turning red, gesticulating wildly. “What’s the meaning of this? Why are you giving me this?”

He waved the cup at her, while pointing with the other hand. They’d never had a violent confrontation with patients before, as their process was very British and tended to soothe them, the majority of whom were quite calm to begin with.

“It’s all right, Mr. Tamworth, if you have a seat I’ll get you a different cup of--”

She was cut off by him flinging the cup at her, potion flying into her face and mouth. The cup bounced off her chin, snapping her jaw shut before falling onto the floor and shattering. The sounds of shouting and breaking china were the last thing she heard before her world went black. 


	2. Chapter 2

Snape had watched Granger’s dark silhouette moving away, off his beach, with a little curiosity and a great deal of territoriality. He’d chosen to move here because of how few wizards were in the area, leaving him to work in peace. Nearly all of his business was conducted remotely, initially via owl and recently via computer, though service for that was still spotty here at times. After she’d left, he’d packed up the last of the ingredients he’d been gathering--really just fresh sea urchins and a bit of kelp--and carefully picked his way back over the rocks to the path home. It was the opposite direction from her, thankfully.

Moonlight led the way, making the path brighter for him, while aiding to the spellwork that protected it from muggles. Not that many wandered out here, at least not locals; more than once he’d chased off a lost tourist, but the most frequent breech of his wards was a lost sheep or sheepdog, and those he was perfectly receptive to. Granger had been the first human he’d spoken to in a week, and he’d been thrown by it. He knew she’d taken over from Orpington at St. Mungo’s, but hadn’t been following what she’d been doing there since he hadn’t been called in for a consult after her tenure had begun. He had assumed it had very little to do with potions. 

The little cottage’s fireplace was still blazing when he stepped back inside, shedding layers then carrying his bag to his basement workshop. It had begun as a root cellar but been easy enough to magically expand and gave him plenty of room to work, with the area muggles none the wiser to his additions. The kelp was put in the oven to dry, and the urchins were split, then despined, with the spines going into the dryer as well. Hopefully they’d be dry enough to powder when he woke. 

The sun was rising when he made his way back up from the lab. For a moment he pondered coffee and getting right back to work, but decided sleep was in order instead. He was no longer so accustomed to long nights of work and little sleep; keeping to a regular schedule had left him feeling healthier than he had in his younger teaching years, as had all the time he spent outside harvesting his own ingredients. Banking the fire, he went to catch a few hours of sleep while his newest ingredients dried. By the time he’d brushed his teeth and crawled between his sheets, he’d already forgotten about the interloper on his harvesting territory.

  
  
  


Four days later, he was in his garden enjoying afternoon tea after sending off his latest batch orders via owl. The breeze was out of the west, blowing in the sea air and sending the owls off with great haste. A lone dark bird struggled against the wind, looking exhausted as it dropped into his garden, landing with a wobble on the back of the bench where he sat. He took the bright green note off it’s leg, and gave the bird a bit of his ginger biscuit. 

Opening the note, he nearly dropped his teacup. With only a moment’s hesitation, he sent the tea service flying back into the house, and stepped down to the end of his garden to apparate to St. Mungo’s, robe swirling around him.

Roo McIlwain, St. Mungo’s Assistant Director of Potions, had been a few years head of Severus at Hogwarts, and also a former Slytherin. He was waiting for Severus when he stepped out of the apparition room. They worked together a few times a year, on the very rare occasions when Severus was actually called in to consult personally. But that was an exceptionally unusual event, and always an emergency. Even then, he was never greeted by someone this high up the chain of command. If the note hadn’t put him on alert, the presence of McIlwain would have.

“Thank you for coming so quickly, Master Snape.” There was no perfunctory handshake, just a nod as they headed down the corridor. 

“There was an accident with an experimental potion?” Severus followed as they strode through the corridors, mediwitches and patients parting like the sea for the two tall men.

McIlwain hit the button for the lift and finally turned to him. “They were running trials on a few variants of a new potion in the Memory Division. One of the new patients had an episode and threw it back at Granger.”

They stepped into the lift alone, and the doors closed. “What is the purpose of the potion?”

“They’re working on combining it with something like muggle cognitive therapy to help restore memory damage. Thus far they’ve had very promising results, but no one has any idea what it’s ingestion would do to an otherwise healthy witch with no memory issues.”

“What is her current status?”

The lift opened with a ping, onto the floor of the Janus Thickey Ward. Severus shared a long look with the other man, knowing that if she was here, Granger had already been deemed beyond help of the usual magical means, or even the hospital’s own experts in unusual cases. Only when all other options were exhausted had he been called in to consult. He glanced down the long empty corridor, then back to McIlwain with a raised brow.

The silver haired man extended a long arm, ushering him down the hallway as he spoke. “She lost consciousness immediately, and was completely unresponsive, with decreased pulse and respiration. Almost as if she were under stasis. When she fell, she also fractured her left ulna, but that was healed immediately. We’ve got vitals somewhat stabilized with magic but….”

They drew to a stop outside a blue door that had fewer wards on it than Severus would have expected from prior experience. When McIlwain opened the door, he understood why--the patient remained comatose, her form still under the sky blue hospital bedding, a glowing magical display of vital information hovering to the left side of the bed and giving the room a sickly green glow. Severus studied them for a moment before nodding at McIlwain, who faded them, allowing the room lights to rise a bit. Then he was able to get a good look at her. Like something out of a fairy tale, she appeared perfectly healthy but wholly unresponsive, even when he tried stimulating her foot the muggle way.

Tilting his head and pondering, he turned back to the hospital’s Potions Master. “Presumably you’ve already analyzed the potion?”

“We had to examine three different variations, because they were doing a randomized trial. The magical randomizer means we don’t know what version the patient was being dosed with.”

“You didn’t think to sample the means of dosing? Surely there was residue.”

“The hospital elves had cleaned the room as soon as we moved her out for treatment. We were lucky enough that there were still vials of each variant left for us to study.”

Severus glowered at him, but the older man was uncowed. “And you’ve learned nothing from studying the samples?” 

“We’ve learned an impressive amount about the potion itself, and are really eager to see the study results--”

“But nothing about what it might have done to Miss Granger?”

“Mistress Granger has been been exposed to a potion that works on the synapses of the brain, stimulating them, allowing them to reroute around problem areas more effectively, and generate new connections. But when there isn’t a problem, we suspect it has overloaded her brain function, causing it to shut down to protect itself.”

Severus hummed a non-answer, and waved a hand to brighten the diagnostic runes again, peering at them closely. Nothing stood out to him as exceptional. “Do you have samples of the potion I can work with?”

There was a pause before McIlwain answered, “They can be provided. Would you like to work here?”

The question had been asked as if he didn’t already know the answer; he never worked at the hospital if he could help it, having spent more than enough time there while recovering from Nagini years ago. Now, the less time spent there the better. He looked down at the woman, lying still as death in the bed, and shook his head. “No. I will take the samples to my own laboratory.”

The Assistant Director of Potions nodded, and turned away without another look at the woman in the bed. Severus cast one final glance at his former student, then followed out the door. They once more moved swiftly through the hospital, unhindered by any other members of the staff or errant family members; the sombre looks on the mens’ faces was clearly a deterrent to engagement. When the lift deposited them at the underground level of the Potions Department, the whole feeling of the building changed, from a sombre one to a busy hive of activity, as dozens of brewers worked at numerous tables, steam and flames in a rainbow of colors rising around the massive chamber, adding to the busy atmosphere of the place.

“This way,” said McIlwain, moving along the wall and keeping out of the way of the brewers at work. They ultimately arrived in the far corner of the brewing area, where there was a clean, clear bench space that obviously was the Assistant Director’s. The man summoned a case as they stepped up to the countertop, and undid a bit of complex warding that opened the box with a faint hiss. There was a rattle of vials as a rack was raised magically, being held aloft for just a moment before settling down on the counter.

Tapping the tops of three vials along the right side with his wand, they rose into Severus’ open, waiting hand. The faint variation in between the three was noted, but instinct told him there was something else, too. “Do you have the full method they were using for this?”

“One moment, I’ll have them bring it down.” A few quick lines scratched across parchment were hastily dispatched. “You’re sure you don’t want to work on this here? You’d be closer to the patient if you do have a breakthrough.”

“Apparition or floo allows that as well. She’s closer to the apparition rooms than this lab, at any rate,” Severus sneered, as he took in the noisy, crowded workspace. No, this would absolutely not do for anything but the most urgent of brewings by him.

An interoffice message came winging back in, landing on the desk next to the case of potions vials. “Ah, Malik’s a quick one. Here, Severus.”

He opened the envelope and studied the potion formula and method enclosed. It was not a complicated one, and only required three hours to brew. The ingredients, however, were potent ones, a few of which were restricted. “Interesting. I’d like to brew a batch of it myself first, and see if I can reverse engineer some type of antidote. But this may take more than a potion to reverse.”

McIlwain met his steady dark gaze with a sharp glacier blue one. “That’s why I wanted you on this, Severus. You’re the best person I know with mind magic, certainly better than anyone we’ve got here.”

He looked away after a moment, feeling McIlwain’s feeble attempt at legilimency brush right off his mind. 

“You see?”

“I do. I’ll see where working with the potion gets me, but I’ll need further access to the patient as well.”

“Of course. Follow me.” 

With that, they headed back up through the hospital again, to the Janus Thickey Ward’s main desk. As someone who already had consultancy clearances with the hospital, it was simple enough to add Severus to the wards protecting the room, and give him the ability to examine the patient whenever necessary; Severus worked regular hours, but rarely worked the nine-to-five hours the hospital ran under.

As they parted, McIlwain nodded stiffly as the lift stopped on the floor with the apparition rooms. “Let me know what progress you make.”

“I will let you know something tomorrow at the latest,” he answered, face blank, mind already working through the process he wanted to use to brew then find the countermeasure to the vials in the pocket of his robes. Then he turned down the hall and stepped into the first free apparition room, spinning right into his lab to get to work.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A warning that there is some animal testing of potions this chapter, involving nifflers.

The memory potion had proved elegantly simple for Severus to brew. He was actually quite impressed by it--not that he would ever admit it, of course. Three new cauldrons of the potion sat cooling as he studied them. The results matched the vials he’d been given by the hospital, leaving him to decide the next step. Eventually, he concluded that the best next step would be to owl the hospital and have the records from the study sent to him, so he could see the results and reactions in the intended patients; he also requested a few test nifflers, which he could dose with the potion, since he did not keep any live animals for experimenting.

While awaiting a response, he sat down with a cuppa and looked over the potion ingredients once again, analyzing each of their properties and how they interacted with memory and the brain. Many were heavily stimulative, encouraging growth of neural connections. He wanted to see how healthy subjects reacted, whether such reaction was a long-term or temporary one, and what results potion alone might have in reversing it. 

He began to sketch out a list of ingredients to counter those in the original potion. Lethe River water, certainly, and blue lotus root. Perhaps he could balance that with the type of preparation used on the carrageenan in the original formula. By the time a pair of owls arrived from St. Mungo’s with a copy of the experiment notes and nine nifflers--far more than he needed or wanted--he’d already formulated an approach to an antidote. Gathering everything up, he returned to his lab to get back to work.

Eyeing the nifflers, he sorted them into cages and labeled them clearly. Control, fresh, fermented, and dried each contained one animal, and he put the others aside in case he needed to repeat anything or experiment further. Then a few calculations gave him what should be a proper dosing for a small mammal, and dosed each of them with the appropriate potion, and sat back to watch.

It didn’t take long to see results. The control animal was, of course, fine. The others all showed the same reaction--unconsciousness and dodgy vitals. He ran a few diagnostics on the animals, and found they were all within survival ranges, so he left them on the countertop as he began ingredient preparations for his potential antidote. Unpleasant as he felt about such treatment, he wanted to see if any of them revived on their own.

The antidote was, of course, much more complex than the original potion. And volatile. A batch fizzed up into fumes and he was forced to begin again, noting no change in the nifflers in the meantime. A second batch, using the dried and powdered lotus root, went better. But it had to simmer for several hours, leaving him time to rest.

After finishing up the possible antidote, he made a few notes before dosing the nifflers. Since they were all still unconscious, he vanished the potion directly into their stomachs. On two—the one that had been dosed with the dried variant and with the fresh—the result was instantaneous. Both became incredibly manic, racing around their cages, spinning in circles, crying out, then dropping over, dead. The third niffler, which had been dosed with the fermented variant, awoke more slowly, and seemed to have a minute or two of lucidity, before lapsing into the same behavior as the others, ultimately meeting no better end.

He stared down at the three dead nifflers. More work was clearly needed, but what he had been concerned about all along—the brain becoming overwhelmed and unable to handle the stimulus of so many reconnections being created simultaneously--had fairly obviously come to pass. The antidote had circumvented the brain’s protective shutdown, and briefly permitted the overactivity, but then the brain severed all that hyperconnectivity at once. 

The solution seemed clear enough, and so he picked up another of the nifflers. Dosing this one with the dried potion variant, he watched as it quickly lapsed into unconsciousness. Placing it into the cage, he stared down at it; he’d never used legilimency on an animal before, but it was worth a try. 

Entering the unconscious, unguarded, extremely simple mind of the animal was no challenge at all for him. But there was nothing there, just blankness, in a way he’d never experienced in any legilimency before. Withdrawing, he summoned another of the animals, huffing at his stupidity in not getting a baseline assessment before dosing the other. The conscious creature’s mind was no more difficult to enter, but it was vivid, full of sparkling desire, primal sensory urges, an overlying, light tenor of fear. He pulled back out, returning the faintly trembling animal to the cage with it’s fellows. Then he stared at the unconscious animal, thoughtful for a few minutes, before slipping into its mind again.

He dove down into the depths of black nothingness, far deeper than would usually have been safe to delve into a conscious mind of any living thing. At the bottom of the abyss was the faintest spark of something, like a pale star seen through clouds, pulsing faintly. Only then did he pull away, sitting back down hard on his stool, heart racing and breath unsteady, mind racing.

Was that where swotty, know-it-all, brilliant Granger was trapped now? 

Staring at the vial of antidote, his eyes flicked between it and the niffler. After his breathing returned to normal, he summoned a dropper, and pondered dosage. The animal was so deeply affected by the initial potion, the antidote would have to be dosed incrementally. And now, he wanted to delve into the mind of the creature between each dosing as well, to see what was happening to the mind itself. But it would have to be done carefully, lest he damage the carefully rebuilding brain. He was suddenly very glad for the overabundance of nifflers, because he had a feeling he’d want to test this more than once before attempting it on a mind like Granger’s.

  
  
  


The next morning, he checked on the status of the niffler before penning a letter for McIlwain on the progress he’d made. After two microdoses, autonomic function had almost stabilized, but consciousness and higher function had not returned. Still, it was a promising start, and he stated that fact clearly in his letter. The requirement of continued assessments and multiple small doses, however, led him to ponder his approach to the treatment of a human patient as he waited to assess the progress of the niffler’s mind after another dose of the antidote.

He gave the animal an hour as he worked on a few other potions, then slipped back into its mind. The faint light was easier to find now, mostly because he knew where to look for it; there was still no greater awareness, no reaction to his presence at all. Upon withdrawal, though, there was a faint twitch this time, some movement of the animal on its own. Making his notes, he went back to work, setting a timer for another hour to give the niffler’s mind time to rest and recover before dosing it again.

As he was preparing a few simple potions, he received a return owl from St. Mungo’s. There had been no improvement in Granger’s diagnostics, and she was only being kept stable via magic.

He looked back over at the caged niffler, then down at the parchment. He drummed his fingers on the counter, face drawing into a deep scowl that would have frightened any of his past students. This would need to be a long, delicate process. It was a complex process with a simple niffler, with the intricacy of a human mind, let alone one as admittedly sharp as Granger’s must be, it would be nearly impossible. Restoring the animal was going to take days; it would surely take weeks to bring her back fully, if he was able to at all.

Exhaling slowly, he closed his eyes for a minute, coming to terms with what that would mean.

Then he gathered himself and got back to work, dosing the niffler with the next round of treatment. Only after he finished making the potions he needed for other orders did he return to the letter from McIlwain. He penned a longer note than he had that morning, outlining what little progress had been made with the niffler, and expounding on the need for even slower progress to treat a human patient, and outlining his plans for it.

He sighed as he watched the owl wing away with his missive to McIlwain. There was only one thing to be done. Granger would have to come to him.


	4. Chapter 4

It had been cold and dark for so long, and awareness of those facts were something that only came rushing back to her in an overwhelming sense of discomfort. She wasn’t sure if she’d been breathing well before, but she struggled to get enough breath into lungs that felt as if she’d been caught in roiling surf, allowing her only seconds to gasp half a breath of air before being tumbled under again. Then it was all nothingness again, pulling her down, somewhere beyond the cold and dark.

  
  
  


There was one spot of brightness, dim and faint, the only indication of direction, of where to attempt that aching, struggling breath as her heart raced and stuttered. It wasn’t just the faraway brightness, though. Something about it was pulling her towards it, giving her the momentum she lacked for herself, for the darkness was sticky as treacle and she was frozen in it. There was something else, though, beyond her, not quite tugging, but gently supporting, pushing the treacle away, making it easier to rise. 

The almost-breath helped, though.

  
  
  


She was almost aware of her  _ self _ , enough to know cold and alone and dark, but also the brightness of hope, shining somewhere far away. She wanted to go to it now, felt her pulse racing and took a breath, trying to find some kind of impulse or energy to move, not mired in darkness now, just surrounded by it, she could move towards that little light.

  
  
  


In the darkness she floated, breathing easier, pulse slow and steady. She did not like it here, but it no longer felt dangerous; there were times it almost felt comforting, as if she  _ was _ once more. Far above, something like a star shone like a beacon. It felt as if the level of whatever matter she was floating in rose, lifting her towards it like a helping hand.

  
  
  


She floated in the cool darkness but looking up, not so far above anymore, starlight shining down into a deep well. There might even have been a smell, like clean water and growing things. Out of her peripheral vision, it almost seemed as if a shadow passed over the light above, as if I a figure was looking down, watching. She might not be alone, and she tried to see who might be there, but it was still so far away. Taking a deep breath, she rallied her determination, wanting to know who else was here.

  
  
  


The brightness was like the full moon on at the seashore, somewhere she felt she might have once been. Somewhere beyond here. It was up there, she knew, over the edge of the darkness. Someone else was there, gazing down at her, a dark figure who might have extended a hand to her. She reached up, trying to catch the shadow’s attention, catch their hand, let them help her out of this place.

The grasp was cool and tentative, little more than a ghost against her hand, but she clutched at it, reaching up with both hands towards the moonlight, rising. For just a moment, their fingers brushed against one another, and she felt a warmth beyond anything she could remember, but it was too much, searing her before she fell back again, down into the cool darkness. It was safe in the darkness, but so cold.

  
  
  


A hand was reaching for her again, a shadow against silvery moonlight. Blinking, she stretched up, fingers brushing across each other, until their hands clasped together. It was warm, so warm, suffusing through her until she felt almost alive. She hadn’t realized how numb she felt until that moment, when tingling feeling ripped down from her hand to her wrist and into her arm. 

She tightened her grip, wanting more of that feeling, wanting more feeling, wanting that frisson of warmth to flow through her whole body. It moved down her arm, and the hand gripped hers tighter, gave her a bit of a tug upwards, as if wishing her to join them. The warmth suffused up her arm, tingling into her spine, into her head. 

It suddenly felt as if she was thinking clearly for the first time she could remember. Until that moment it hadn’t occurred to her to think, as if that was as new a concept as warmth. It startled her so much that she let go, falling back into the cool darkness.

  
  
  


Illumination broke the nothingness again, and it was easier to grasp at the shadowy hand extended to her. Warmth suffused her more easily, more thoroughly. Thought felt possible again, enough to wonder where she was,  _ who _ she was. The man was still nothing but a dark shadow against the brightness of her awareness, but he felt safe, as if he were a part of that awareness that was gradually returning to her.

“Hermione Granger,” the figure said, in a deep, soothing voice.

She could merely nod, but knew that was her name, a simple but essential part of who she was, who she should be outside of this nothing ness. But he seemed to be here to help guide her out of the nothingness and back to herself. She wrapped her other hand around his grip on her, trying to hold on, trying to remember who she was.

For a moment, she felt who Hermione Granger was, someone brilliant and brave and beautiful. Someone valued enough to bring back from almost nothingness. Someone who would need all the brilliance she’d ever possessed to find her way back from the edge of this void.

The edge was precarious, though, and the pressure of his other hand on hers, and the idea of so much more knowledge just outside her awareness, was enough to send her back down into it again.

  
  
  


When she found his hand reaching for her again, she was able to fully pull herself up out of the darkness, with only a little assistance from him, until she was standing fully beside him. All of her felt warmer, almost alive again, as she stood on a moonlit night with a shadowy man.

“Hermione Granger.” His hand still remained in hers, even after he’d pulled her up with him, as she embraced it in both of hers.

“Yes.” This time, she managed to find words, though it felt foreign on her tongue. She tried it again. “Yes.”

There was a sense that the shadowy man was pleased, though she still could not see his face well, even in the light of the full moon. She tilted her head, peering up at him.

“Who are you?”

“Severus Snape,” he answered. The light seemed to change then, and it was as if she could see his face, somewhat. Pale, even moreso in this silvery light, with dark hair and eyes, an aquiline nose and thin lips, drawn and unsmiling, though his expression did not look displeased.

“Thank you, Severus Snape.” She squeezed the hand she still held, and his expression did change then, lips ticking up at the corners and eyes softening, so that he looked far less intimidating.

“You are welcome, Mistress Granger. Now, if you will wait here and rest yourself, I will return in a while and see if we can work on restoring more of your mind.”

“What happened to me?” She tried to remember, but there was no memory to recall. 

“Now is not the time. More of your mind must be restored first, so that you may understand.” He released her hand and began to pull away, but she held tight.

“Where are you going?”

He stared at her a long moment, as if assessing the state of her mind. “I am going back to my own reality. I am here in your mind only through legilimency.”

“Oh.” She had no idea what that meant, and what would happen when he left. But she released him.

He stepped away, walking off down the rocky seashore with only a second glance over his shoulder at her before fading away to nothingness.

Hermione sat down on one of the larger flat rocks, and tried to think.

  
  
  


It seemed like a long stretch of nothingness, broken only by the gentle wash of the sea on the rocks, before Severus Snape returned. She was almost instantly aware of his presence here with her, even from far down the shore. Sitting on the edge of her rock, she watched him approach, studying the wraithlike figure he cut, dark as the nothingness she’d emerged from, clothes swirling around him as he wove between the rocks. He was tall and lean, and his gaze was focused on her as he approached. 

“Hermione Granger,” he greeted her with her name, and this time it felt reassuring.

“Hello again, Severus Snape.”

He nodded at her, then stood awkwardly for a moment before settling into a rock himself, facing her. “Now, you have had some time to think while I was away.”

“How long were you gone?” Her brow furrowed, trying to make sense of the time that had passed so strangely.

“Twelve hours.” At her expression of shock, he reached out a hand towards her. “This level of legilimency is draining upon the practitioner’s magic. I required rest before helping you further.”

“Magic,” was her faint echo, as she took a long deep breath.

“We are both magical beings, Mistress Granger. Had you not been a witch, you would not have survived the accident.”

“I am a witch.” The thought, the knowledge that she had magic, and was powerfully skilled, tumbled through her brain, and she knew it was true, felt it in her very bones. She nodded, and asked, “Tell me about this accident?”

He looked her over, frowning, but nodded. “You work in memory research at St. Mungo’s hospital. You were testing a promising new potion when one of your patients threw his dose in your face. You ingested enough to cause your uninjured brain to become overwhelmed and shut itself down.”

“And you’ve helped turn it back on.”

“No,” he shook his head. “You’ve had to do that yourself. I’ve only helped show you the way, and have been gradually administering an antidote to your physical self.”

“You work with me? Is that how I know you? Why I trust you?”

“I hadn’t seen you in years, until a few weeks ago. I am your former professor and a potions master on retainer with the hospital for particularly tricky cases.”

“Like mine.”

“Exactly so.”

“And you’re in my mind…?”

“Using legilimency. Mind magic. In this case, a particularly difficult means of it.”

“You found me and helped me find my way out of where I locked myself away.”

“Just so, Mistress Granger.”

“You’re inside my mind, saving me from myself. Hermione, please, sir.”

At that he very nearly smiled, the corners of his lips ticking briefly upwards, practically transforming his sour face. “You are beginning to sound more yourself. Or at least more as I remember you.”

She did smile at that, the first time she could remember smiling at anything. It felt good to do so, as if her whole being lightened a bit. “Good.”

“And you may address me as Severus.” He wasn’t quite smiling, but the good intention behind the gesture was felt.

“So this is not real?” She waved a hand at the moonlit seashore, waves crashing on kelpy rocks in sudden eerie silence.

“It is your mind’s reconstruction of the last place we saw one another.” He allowed her to process this information a few moments, studying him, and then the landscape again. “We ran into one another while gathering potion ingredients.”

“Seaweed,” she said quietly, shuffling a foot forward to prod at a pile of it.

“In your case, yes. It was a key component of the potion you were working on.”

“I fell on the rocks.”

“You would have done, without my cushioning charm.”

She looked out across the sea again, at lights in the distance. “We were on an island?” 

“Inishmore. Off the west coast of Ireland. I live here.”

“So we’re here in reality, too?” Puzzlement crossed her face, as if she was trying to work it all out.

“Not here on the beach. But on the island, at my home, yes. You were at St. Mungo’s, but I needed to treat you more regularly than leaving you there would have permitted.”

“How often?”

“Every four hours.”

“I see.” She was quiet a long time, gazing out at the water. “I am a Potions Mistress?”

“My understanding is that you attended muggle university and trained as a psychiatrist, and then returned to do a mastery in Healing with a subspeciality in Potions.”

“And you were my potions professor there.” That seemed to naturally follow. 

“No, I was your Potions and Defense professor at Hogwarts.”

“Hogwarts.” The name tasted familiar, important, like it should release a maelstrom of feeling, but she couldn’t conjure any of that to her mind.

“It is the wizarding school you attended from age eleven on. The school is in Scotland, isolated from muggles but with a small wizarding village nearby. You were--”

“It’s a castle. On a hill above Hogsmeade village. I was so excited about going, it made everything that never made sense about my childhood suddenly make sense.” She had been smiling again, but then frowned. “So much went wrong there, though.”

“Indeed it did, but that is probably not the discussion to have to start you off.” He turned a bit, studying her. “This was more than enough for now. Allow memories to return as they will, and I will help you sort through them when I return again. I expect that your mind was highly organized before, and that should make the restoration easier.”

Biting her lip, she watched him stand. “How long until they all return? Until I’m sitting on the beach for real, and not just in my mind?”

He tilted his head, as if computing. “I do not know for certain, and undoubtedly the time will pass differently for you here in your mind than it does in the physical world. Days at least, perhaps weeks. You are a well-educated witch with a large amount of knowledge to restore.”

“All right then,” she nodded, accepting his verdict without question. Most unlike her, but a potentially overwhelming amount of memories had been touched on, and her mind was likely working hard to reconnect all of them. “I will see you soon, Severus.”

“Hermione.” He nodded, once, then turned and headed down the rocks, fading away before her eyes. 

She remained sitting on the broad, flat rock, staring unseeingly out at the moonlit water. Memories came of other nights, of cold winters gazing up at stars from a castle tower, of studying by candlelight in a beautiful old library, of sitting by a blazing hearth with friends in a room decorated in burgundy and gold. Remembering a night of terror and darkness and death, and the man she’d just seen, dying in front of her eyes. 

There would be many questions for him when he returned.


	5. Chapter 5

When he returned, Severus provided many of the answers she sought. Having been her teacher, there was much about her personal experiences at Hogwarts and her further educational experiences that he did not know. But he reassured her that those were things that could be expanded upon later, as her mind restored itself with more connections, or as she was able to speak with friends. She already felt as if her head was fuller, heavier, as she remembered classes at Hogwarts, and violin lessons, and French classes as a little girl, summer holidays with her parents to France and Italy.

It had taken several visits to help her assimilate all this knowledge. The intense feeling of fullness in her head had worried him at the start, so he’d been very careful his next few visits, easing the amount of information being brought up, focusing as best he could on one thing at a time. He’d put her off about the memory of him dying for several visits, until he spent what seemed much longer than his usual time with her.

He discussed with her all of the history of the Second Wizarding War, from her time as a First Year to the Battle of Hogwarts, explaining her role and his. She mulled the totality of this quietly, and after asking if she had further questions—there were surprisingly few, in the moment—he left her once more to allow that knowledge settle into her mind and reconnect with what she had already remembered.

Upon his return, she was once again ready with questions, though not in the way he seemed to expect. They’d begun walking the beach, moving towards the edges of her memory. As they walked, she began, “After helping save you, I can understand my interest in going into healing, and specializing in potions work. But I don’t understand the memory aspect of it, or why I also got a muggle degree. Was that because of you as well?”

He cleared his throat. “No, not so far as I’m aware. I’ve hardly seen you since that summer. I was led to believe it was to do with your parents. But it’s not an area I can particularly help with.”

“Oh. My parents encouraged me to get a medical degree? Because they were dentists?”

He stopped waking then, staring at her curiously. “That may have been the case. But,” he paused, concern clear even on his stoic face. “Their memories were modified by you during the war, to protect them. And it did protect them, probably saved their lives. But their memories were unable to be restored. My understanding is that you left the wizarding world for a few years after that, and got your degree then, before returning and undertaking your healing apprenticeship.”

“Oh.” She sat right down on the wet sand, oblivious to his presence. Her memories of her parents had been faint, returning entwined with other memories, and few on their own, little of her childhood before Hogwarts having been discussed. This felt as if a dam was about to give way in her head, one she’d known was there but hadn’t wanted to examine too closely. 

“They’re coming back to you, aren’t they?” He knelt before her, looking concerned.

She bit her lip and nodded. 

“Tell me,” he requested, as he’d done each time she’d threatened to be overwhelmed by the return of memory. Talking out their return had helped her to make sense of her memories, and organize them into her mind. She’d noticed his initial reluctance at listening to her, but the more she spoke with him, then more willing he seemed to settle in and listen to her speak, occasionally offering queries to draw out further memories and make connections to things they already discussed. A few times he’d even seemed close to smiling.

“You know,” she said one visit, “What you’re doing with me is what I intended the original potion to do for patients.”

“Your obliviation reversal potion. You’re remembering more about your work?” There was more than a little eagerness in his voice, and definitely something close to a smile playing at his lips.

“Yes,” she said with a nod. “I was the youngest Division Head appointed at St. Mungo’s in more than a century, and felt so out of my depth some days, being in charge. But the work, I always felt good about the work. We’re helping people, usually people everyone else had deemed beyond hope.”

“You were always an advocate for those you thought unfairly treated.” He was, for once, not looking at her, but out at the water.

“Including you,” she said softly. 

“Yes,” he answered, just as quietly.

“It was really Harry, though. My word to the Wizengamot wasn’t anything compared to the value of his testimony.”

“And who served as ghostwriter of that testimony, as she helped write more than half of the essays he turned in to me?”

“Well,” she would have blushed, if such a thing were possible inside her own mind. “It was more of a polish than a ghostwrite. He has a good heart, just not always a way with words.”

“You do too, Hermione.”

She turned astonished eyes on him, mouth gaping.

But he merely cleared his throat, and said, “Now tell me about the memory restoration potion.”

“There was so much damage from the war,” she began, and fell into what felt like an hours-long discussion with him on potion theory and spell damage, that left her wishing he’d been working with her on the potion all along. His knowledge of mind magics was beyond most in living memory, too, and what he shared with her would be therapeutically beneficial in the future. He had actually smiled, just a little, when she’d told him that. He asked questions about her research and testing that felt like personal curiosity and fascination, rather than merely trying to draw out information from her mind as it had before. She wanted this discussion to go on for days, and got the feeling that he did, too. 

But by the time she began to discuss the results of the trials with varying carrageenan preparations, he was looking exhausted, and she knew they must have been discussing far longer than usual, both absorbed in their discussion. “It’s been too long here for you, hasn’t it?”

“I’m sorry, Hermione. So much mind magic, over such long periods, is tiring.”

“I understand, Severus. It’s been a lot for me as well. But things are feeling more natural now, easier to recall.”

“That’s an excellent sign.”

“One that means I’ll be able to walk off this beach with you soon?” She looked down the shoreline, towards the bend where they usually ended their strolls and he usually disappeared.

“I believe that will be possible soon. Your mind has proven remarkably resilient and organized.”

She smiled up at him as he stood, and bowed slightly to her, as he’d taken to doing recently. “I will rejoin you once I have rested and done some additional necessary work.”

Nodding, she rose herself and silently watched him walk back down the beach, vanishing around the bend. She was tempted to try following him, wondering if it would bring her out of this limbo and back to full awareness. But he’d said  _ soon, _ and she knew how to be patient. And she had plenty to think about--nothing but things to think about. She settled back down, letting memories wash back over her like waves on the sand, carrying more and more connections, more experiences lived and learned.

  
  
  


When he came strolling back up the beach to her, he was moving tentatively, and concern was writ clearer on his face than any emotion she’d seen from him so far. He looked exhausted as well, dark circles under his eyes and hair disheveled. 

“Severus?” Reaching his side, she put a hand on his arm, reassuringly solid and real as ever.

“Hermione,” he sighed, pulling both of them down to sit on the rocks. 

“What’s wrong? Am I—“

“No, you are physically well, improving even,” he hastily reassured her. He was quiet for a long moment, then carefully continued, “I began working on your condition with a few nifflers. They are how I developed the protocol I’ve used with you. Bringing them back to waking consciousness has been...difficult.”

Swallowing, she nodded. “Difficult or impossible?”

“There are eight dead nifflers in my laboratory.”

“I see.” She knew she worked on research, remembered working on experiments that hadn’t worked out. Reining in her myriad questions about his research process, she merely asked, “Any idea why?”

He shrugged a bit, more careless than he usually seems about theory. “I can make a hypothesis, but I’ve only got one more animal to test it on.”

“That hypothesis?”

“I believe they’ve all been brought back too quickly. The initial tests of the antidote showed that it needed to be dosed slowly, and the patient brought back incrementally to avoid overstimulation.”

“Increments have proved too great?”

“Do you think it sustainable for me to remain as I am, while you try going slower with the final niffler?”

“Yes. We need at least a few more days. But I have been extrapolating time based on the nifflers, and nothing is certain. Your mind is infinitely more complex.”

“All right,” she nodded. “My memories can work on knitting themselves back together while you work with the niffler.”

He gave her a long, searching look. “You will be all right here on your own? You have had no more feelings of heaviness or pressure on your mind?”

“Not since I remembered my parents.”

“Well then.” He looked at her curiously again, as if he wanted to say more, but eventually looked off to the sea. “I will come back for you.”

“I know you will, Severus.” She kept one hand on his arm until he pulled away silently, stomping down the beach.

  
  
  


It felt like an eternity before he returned. She’d been feeling more herself, more _Hermione_ _Granger,_ than she had before; she wanted to get back to her physical life, her work, her research, her patients and coworkers and friends. But when he finally came back to her, his face was drawn and wan, and he was slow to meet her eyes or respond to her enthusiastic greeting.

“Nine dead nifflers?” She put a hand on his shoulder, and he finally met her gaze and nodded gravely.

“Oh,” she sighed.

“Indeed.” He sank down onto the rocks, staring up at her with sad, dark eyes.

“Well,” she bit her lip, summoning her courage, “I have significantly more training in mental magic than nifflers. That might be a key difference.”

“It might be,” he acknowledged. “Your mind is organized, methodical, sensible. That might make a difference, but I cannot know for sure. You still want to try this?”

“I’m as good as dead if you don’t, Severus. This isn’t real, it isn’t living, I can’t stay in this limbo forever.”

His head dropped into his hands for a few moments, and she left him to gather his own nerve, but she sat down close beside him. After a few moments, he reached out and took her hand, their fingers twinning as they had that first time she’d reached out of the darkness.

“You are certain?” On anyone else’s face, his expression might have looked blase, but she’d spent enough time with him now to recognize the anguish.

But she could not remain within herself indefinitely. “I’m certain.”

He did not look certain, but offered her his hand anyway. “Come with me. It’s time to leave this place, for better or for worse.”

Without a word, she took his hand unhesitatingly, grasping as firmly as she had when she first reached out of the darkness to take hold. His reaction was startled limpness at first, but he quickly returned her grip just as securely, giving her hand a little squeeze. They turned, and walked hand in hand down the beach. But before they reached the bend where he always disappeared, though, she stopped, pulling him up with her.

“Thank you, Severus. No matter what happens, thank you.” She looked up into his worried face, emotion slipping free for once as he focused all his mental efforts on her.

There was no verbal response he could make, merely nodded and squeezed her hand in response. Then they were moving again, her stepping in a little closer to his side as they went. She squeezed his hand hard enough for her nails to dig into his skin a bit as they reached the bend. But he did not hesitate, just kept them moving, more focused than ever. 

As they walked around the rocky promontory where he always disappeared, the beach faded away, sand disappearing underfoot and sound of lapping waves echoing away into nothingness. Everything went black once again.


	6. Chapter 6

He hadn’t moved in nearly an hour, merely sat staring at the young woman tucked into his guest bed. Next to him, the fireplace crackled warm and toasty, having been blocked from the floo after he’d contacted Roo to let him know he had, at her own urging, brought Hermione back to consciousness. Then he’d sat back to wait.

That she had not immediately died was an improvement over what had happened to all of the unfortunate nifflers. But she’d not awoken, either. He mentally berated himself for expecting her to wake with a fluttering of lashes and a dewy expression like some kind of fairytale princess. Instead, she remained asleep, vitals stable, eyelids flickering with REM sleep for the first time in the two weeks she’d been there. 

But he’d been unable to stray too far from her side, not now when he was so close to restoring her to consciousness, not after so long spent inside her mind wondering if he’d ever be able to converse with her in reality. He tamped  _ that _ thought down immediately and closed his own eyes. The rustle of sheets snapped his eyes open again, but she was still asleep, merely adjusting her position as he’d not seen her do before; she was now on her side, facing him, one hand threatening to fall off the side of the bed.

Then there was a rattling breath, and then she scrambled almost upright in bed, screaming incoherently, fighting the sheet and quilt, eyes wide and unfocused. As he rose to go to the bedside, she was successful in extricating herself from the bedding and would have fallen into the floor if he hadn’t caught her. One arm around her shoulder, he shifted her back onto the mattress, rumbling her name like a chant.

After the fourth or fifth repetition of her name, her eyes seemed to lock onto him, and she stopped struggling. It sounded as if she were hissing at him then, but it took only a moment before he realized that she was trying to say his name. 

“Hermione, you’re all right. You are conscious and in my guest room, alert and responsive.”

Her hand settled on his forearm then, and her whole body relaxed. He eased her back onto the bed, stuffing another pillow behind her to help her sit up. Eyes never moved from him as he returned to the fireside chair, which in any other circumstance would have deeply disturbed him; now it just reassured him she’d returned, clever and thoughtful.

“Wh—-“ Her voice, rusty with disuse, caught in her throat. She coughed, trying to clear it.

Rather than answer, he held up a hand and summoned a teapot, then handed her a very weak cup of just-warm chamomile that he’d been keeping ready under stasis. It floated to her side, where she fumbled a bit with the half-filled cup, but managed to lift it to her lips and give him a weak smile as she sipped.

“You remember my being inside your mind?” At her nod, he continued, “You have been unconscious for nearly three weeks. It has been sixteen hours since I brought you back to consciousness.”

She met his assessment with wide eyes, but nodded, and took another tentative sip of the tea, as if urging him to continue. 

“Your body was, of course, physically and magically exhausted. But if I may run some diagnostics?” He flourished his wand in her general direction, and at her assent, cast a few basic diagnostics on her.

She tried to twist her head, then waved her hand at him. After a few seconds, he got the message and rotated the information so she could see it as well. Frowning, she pointed at one set of readings, and he enlarged them, then frowned himself.

“Lower than normal, but nothing a few potions won’t cure. I believe a lot of it is due to your body being in such a state of limbo, along with your mind. Your magic will return as you recuperate. It was nearly a month after awaking from Nagini for mine to return to normal levels.”

“Now?” She finally managed.

He shrugged. “No time like the present to begin. Let me gather what you will need.”

He took the tea things and descended past the kitchen to his lab, returning with an array of nutritional and restorative potions. When he returned to the bedroom she was already asleep again. Knowing how badly her body needed the true rest, he left the potions on the bedside table and settled back into the fireside chair. Nothing was so urgent that it would not keep until she woke again.

  
  
  


Rest and potions did their work, slowly and steadily. In no time at all she was joining him downstairs, reading his books by the fire and discussing everything from the latest potions advances to the works of Thomas Hardy. It was, to his surprise after years of virtual solitude, a pleasure to have her company. He’d been inside her mind, understood her thinking as he did no one else, and was almost constantly surprised at how well she seemed to understand his.

He was also surprised at the way he would frequently look up from his work to find her not reading the book on her lap, but watching him. They would both look away quickly then, returning to whatever they’d been doing and not speaking for at least half an hour. Often, she’d be the one to broach the silence, asking if he’d like tea, or if it might be time for her to take a stroll around his garden.

The garden wasn’t much, and he’d not thought of it as anything more than a practical source for his simpler potion ingredients until her convalescence. Now, it was a source of twice-daily joy, as she took his arm and led him in several ambling laps of it. They’d discuss the effects of the sea air on the growth of fanged geraniums and hellebores; she’d ask about buying some of the neighbor’s sheep’s wool for knitting; she’d ask about the sequenced beacons of light from the area’s lighthouses and the effects of the tides on his ingredient gathering; he’d mostly keep quiet, listening to her, and admiring the view—not out over the sea, as she often stood, wind whipping her curls into living things that threatened to trap him in their embrace—but of the wild-haired, brilliant witch who took his arm without hesitation and shared so many of his interests.

He only ventured into town, such as it was, once a week for fresh provisions. The next trip, he made sure to stop by and ask Mrs. Curran about the wool, and returned bearing not just more apples and tea, but six skeins of yarn and a knitting needle. Hermione had made a high-pitched noise of delight, running her fingers through the yarn the way he wished she’d touch his hair, then had the audacity to laugh as she picked up the knitting needle. He began to turn away, stung, when she’d wrapped her arms around him, and kissed his cheek. 

Then he’d stood, agape and astonished, staring at her as she settled onto his couch, looking pleased as punch. Withdrawing her wand, she picked up the teaspoon from the side of her saucer and transfigured it into another knitting needle. She smiled up at him again then, teeth flashing.

“You need two, Severus. But I can transfigure another one myself now!”

He couldn’t help but smile at that, smile at her, which she returned with another brilliant smile. 

“Would you like a scarf?” She waved the skein of yarn at him, and all he could do was nod stupidly. “I can probably have one done for you before I’m well enough to go.”

That was the idea he’d come to dread—the knowledge that this was all temporary, just an interlude that would be ending in the not so distant future, once she’d fully recovered her magic and her physical strength. Those were both improving daily, and her mind seemed sharp as ever; surely it would be less than a week before she left him. He nodded dumbly.

“How much longer, do you think? There are only two more days of antidote.”

He did his best to keep his tone even as he said, “Not long. I’d like you to stay a day past the final antidote dose, to be certain there are no relapses. But your mind seems to be fully functional, and your magic is returning.”

“Thursday, then?” She raised a brow at him in query, then turned her attention to sorting out the yarn in her hands.

“If all goes well, yes. Thursday.” His voice almost broke, and he turned away, though not before seeing her curious eyes fixed on him.

  
  
  


Tuesday morning, he administered her final microdose of the antidote, and he was glad to be done with brewing it every few days, for it was a fiddly, volatile potion requiring many delicate ingredients and had no shelf-stability. But that also meant he was nearly done with her. He had trouble watching her smile as she handed him back the vial, which he took and marched back down to the lab. 

When he came back up, she was in the kitchen, making tea and smiling. She was almost always smiling at him. “It’s quite lovely out today. Shall we take it in the garden?”

He just stared at her for a moment, in his kitchen making tea asking if he wanted to join her, as if there would ever be a time when his answer to that was  _ no. _ “The garden,” he finally managed to mumble, heading straight out the door without meeting her eyes.

When she joined him five minutes later, as he sat in the sun, the tea tray was floating behind her and only wobbled a little as she settled it onto the table.

“Your magic feels stable?” He felt more emotionally stable, resorting to occlumency to settle himself.

“Stable, and growing stronger. I can cast my patronus again, even.” A wave of her wand left an otter gamboling through his garden, and out the back gate towards the sea, where it faded away.

Gazing out where the otter had faded away, he couldn’t bring himself to look at her as he spoke. “Then barring complications, you may return home tomorrow afternoon.”

“Oh.” It was sharp but soft, turning him almost against his will to look at the woman to his right. 

“So long as you feel up to it. If you are not feeling well enough--”

“No, it’s not that. I feel better than fine, probably better than I have in years.” She smiled at him and sipped her tea, and his hasty worry deflated. He sank back into his seat, looking down at the murky tea. He jumped and nearly spilled the cup when her hand came to rest on his knee; then his eyes did snap up to meet hers.

“It’s not that I don’t feel well. It’s that it will be an adjustment to leave after being here. It’s been so restful, and I’ve enjoyed your company, Severus.”

He couldn’t help his jaw dropping a bit at that, though he snapped it shut quickly enough then shook his head, chuckling, trying to cover his roiling feelings. “No one has ever found me to be good company, Hermione.” 

“Well, you are to me. Though I’m sure you’ll be happy to be rid of my intrusion on your privacy, and get back to your regular work.”

“I have fallen somewhat behind on routine potions work,” he said slowly, trying to parse what she was telling him. He knew she was more direct than he regarding her sentiments, but also knew that she was aware of that and was somewhat deferential to his more reserved nature. “But having you here has not felt an intrusion.”

“I’m glad of that,” she replied, smiling over the rim of her teacup. “Because I’d like to come see you again when I’m well.”

He blinked, then nodded hastily. She returned the smile with a wider one of her own, then turned her eyes out past the garden, along the cliff’s edge. 

“Might we venture a bit further for our walk today?”

“Of course, if you feel up to it.” He would walk all day, if she was at his side. Perhaps, if she really returned, he could persuade her to trek up to Dun Aonghasa. That seemed unlikely, though; surely any subsequent visits would be merely to discuss potions research. A month ago, he would have thought such a thing unlikely, and now it seemed disappointing to him. Tamping that down, he rose and offered her his hand. “Shall we?”

Rather than simply taking his hand, she wrapped a hand around his entire arm, pulling him along with her out the garden gate and down the cliffside path with the steadiest step he’d seen from her yet. 

  
  
  


She’d arrived at his home with nothing, and while friends had sent along a few essentials, she was leaving with little more than a handbag. He’d tried to busy himself with lunch cleanup without magic, to distract himself from her imminent departure, but naturally she hadn’t allowed that. Instead, she’d marched right into his kitchen and put a hand on his shoulder; he’d had to take a deep breath before he could turn to face her.

“Prepared for your portkey home?”

“Five minutes,” she said with a smile, holding up a stringless wooden tennis racquet. 

“Might be safer in the garden.” He gestured towards the door, wanting her to just be gone so he could mourn her loss in solitude. 

“Come wait with me, please?” He couldn’t refuse her, not when she extended a hand to enticingly, pulling him closer to her even as she led them both out the door. 

She cast tempus with a smile, magic flowing easily now. “Two minutes.”

He could only nod formally, eyes not on her but the rusty racquet that would be talking her away. 

“Thank you for everything, Severus.” Her voice was soft, more hesitant than he’d ever heard her. And then her hand, the one not grasping the racquet, was on his cheek, leaving him no choice but to look into her eyes, cinnamon warm in the afternoon sun.

Then she was nearly in his arms, or would have been, had he had the presence of mind to wrap them around her, to hold her to him and never let her go. Instead, her lips were against his, for a few fleeting seconds that felt more intimate than anything else he’d ever experienced in his miserable life. She pulled away, then kissed him quickly once more before stepping away and brandishing the portkey-racquet.

He was reaching out a hand to her as she was whisked away, leaving him standing alone in his garden, the words he’d been trying to find for days carried away unheard on the sea breeze.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone who has come along for this ride. It would not be half as good without the Alpha/Beta help of [EmiliaVBlake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmiliaVBlake/pseuds/EmiliaVBlake).

Eighteen months after she first encountered Severus Snape on a moonlit beach, Hermione found herself walking along the same beach under another full moon in the small hours before sunrise. She was stopping occasionally, and gathering the carrageenan she needed for the memory restoration draught she’d created and successfully patented, leading to the successful treatment of nearly two dozen magically memory damaged patients. Occasionally she also handed cockles and kelp to the man who’d finally grown comfortable strolling hand in hand with her, when he was not pausing himself to collect urchin spines or bladderwrack. 

This time, when the charm on her wellies failed and she slipped on the algae-coated rocks, it was his arms, not his cushioning charm that caught her.

“Haven’t I warned you about skipping across like that?” He growled in her ear. Yet it didn’t have any bitterness behind it; she could hear the long-running taunt. 

“But then how would I end up in your arms?” She responded in her most simpering voice, barely containing her laughter. The moon was bright enough she knew he could see her eyes and teasing smirk even without the charmed lenses she’d given to him.

“I just thought you were clumsy.” There was a chuckle under his words, as he straightened her collar, fingers brushing against the column of her neck, sending a shiver through her which had nothing to do with the crisp westerly breeze.

She gripped at his arm where he held her, grabbing more coat than skin, steadying herself, then released him. Not for long, though, because she was reaching up and wrapping her arms around his neck, sliding up onto her toes to kiss him.

His arms went around her then, stepping forward into her embrace until they were flush against one another. “You drive me mad,” he whispered into her ear as they broke apart. 

“Then it’s a good thing I specialize in mental magics.” She tipped up on her toes and kissed him again. “But I don’t want to spend the weekend dealing with madness. Unfortunately I see far too much of that during the week.”

“And just how would you prefer to spend the weekend?”

“You’re a clever wizard, I’m sure you can figure it out eventually.” With a peck to his cheek, she sashayed ahead, letting the slippery rocks give her hips a little more swing. “Though it took you long enough figure out how I felt about you, even  _ after _ I kissed you, then begged you to come work with us. So maybe not.” 

She knew he was watching as she bent over from the waist to gather more carrageenan, taking her time picking through the wrack. He was taken by surprise when she stood and tossed him an urchin, barely managing to catch it magically before grasping it precisely in a gloved hand and tucking it into his bag.

Then he was at her side again, hand on her waist. “Does it involve a long walk around the island gathering ingredients?”

Kissing the tip of his nose, she shrugged. “I suppose I might be willing to make time for that. It wouldn’t do to spend the  _ entire _ weekend abed.”

“There is a particularly nice crop of wild bilberry this year, growing out beyond the Walsh’s pasture.” He kissed the top of her head and wrapped his arm fully around her waist, guiding them away from the breaking waves.

“Well we wouldn’t want to miss that, would we. Especially since there’s that lovely little tea room--”

“Oh no, not during tourist season, Hermione. Remember what happened last time.”

“Maggy just told you to ‘get out.’ Nothing implied that it was a permanent ban. I’ve gone in since then.” She prodded a hunk of seaweed with the boot of her wellie, and they paused as she gathered up a bit of it.

“You weren’t the one who smashed the teapot.” He pulled a thin piece of shell out of her clump of seaweed, squinting a bit, then shoving it in his own bag.

She tossed the rest of the seaweed back down into the wrack, and turned them back towards his cottage. “It’s still chilly, I’ll need tea after walking to warm up.”

“If we come back home afterwards, I will make you tea just as you like it. And offer you alternative means of warming.”

“Like a warming charm?” She turned to look at him, batting her eyes.

“Hmph. A  _ charm. _ I am a potions master,” he whispered, leaning in so close to the curve of her ear that his lips were nearly brushing it. “I can warm you from the inside out, love, in the most delightful of ways.”

Turning her head a fraction, she caught his lips with her own. “That sounds just marvelous. And don’t forget we both need to be in bed early Sunday. There’s that interdepartmental meeting at eight on Monday they want you at, too.”

He pulled back and glowered at her, the effect rather muted by the hand that still remained on the small of her back. They began to pick their way down the beach, heading towards the dark shadow of his cottage. “You had to go and mention that.”

“Going to bed early?” It turned out he was great fun to tease, once you got past the glower and the occasional sharp retorts.

This time he growled in response, and slid his hand down to pinch her bum. “I have absolutely no idea why they feel the need for me to be there.” 

“Because you suggested improvements to our original potion, and your work with me was a crucial factor in the post-administration therapy. And since you’re already a consultant with the other two departments, they wanted you there to discuss the presentation.”

“Surely McIlwain doesn’t think I’m going to take part in the conference?”

“You don’t want to come with me to Barcelona for the conference?” She stopped and looked up at him, slightly hurt; she’d been looking forward to this conference for six months, since the joint paper had been accepted for presentation, and had been delighted that he’d be there to support her, and enjoy evenings in the city with. In fact, she’d already booked her room through the weekend after it wrapped up, planning to enjoy a few extra days in the sun together.

“I will happily come to Barcelona with you. But I want no parts of the conference.”

“You want a holiday then.” They began moving towards the cottage again, on firmer ground as they moved farther from the waterline.

“If such a thing is not objectionable to you. I know we have not yet traveled together--”

“Oh, no, Severus, I love the idea of a holiday with you!” She pirouetted to wrap her arms around him, and kiss his slightly gaping mouth soundly, cutting off any objection. “But I want you to come to my presentation on the memory potion. Your work with me was essential—you should be there.”

He returned her kiss, then got them moving back towards home with a sigh. “Hermione, you are the one who is almost solely responsible for the development of the potion and the followup cognitive treatment. You deserve all of the plaudits coming your way. All I did was suggest the additional anticlockwise stir after the rosemary for stabilization.”

This was well-worn territory for them, even after he’d started working with her and the Memory Division team, who’d been in awe of him at first, and overwhelmed with gratitude at saving Hermione’s life and memory. She’d been nearly overwhelmed, too, at the chance to work with him and his brilliant, intuitive mind; where she could reason her way through developing a potion and how alterations would work, he seemed to know instinctively what to do. And as someone who had learned his skills with mental magic through pragmatic experience and decades of espionage, he was able to work through more natural means than most of her team, all of whom had learned only through controlled, therapeutic training. He’d advanced their trials and their cognitive therapy by leaps and bounds, cutting what was surely months, if not years, off the time it took them to find the most efficacious treatment methodology. 

“I would still be working on the post-potion treatment protocol if it weren’t for you.” She rested a hand on his arm as they approached his home. “And you’ve given me something to focus on outside of work as well.”

“For that, and your persistence in making me understand that, I will be forever grateful.” He pulled her into an embrace just inside his garden gate, lips warm despite the cool evening as they met hers once more. “Now, I believe I promised you something more than a warming charm?”

“I believe it was a perfect cup of tea,” she sad, fingers brushing through the hair at the nape of his neck.

“If a cup of tea is what you’d like, I can oblige. Or perhaps you’d like something more?”

She gazed out at the bright moon shimmering over the sea, no trace of dawn to be seen. “Perhaps a few more hours sleep?”

“That sounds agreeable,” he kissed her temple as they reached the threshold, then undid the complex warding of his home. She led the way inside, comfortable here after spending nearly every weekend for the last six months there with him. Yawning himself, he followed her down to the basement laboratory, where they spent half an hour setting their freshly harvested ingredients to preserve and dry. When he finished, he saw she was sitting on on of the stools by the big stainless #1 cauldron, eyes closed. 

“Hermione?” He whispered, though it felt loud in the echoey space. Her eyes fluttered open, and she gave him a weak smile as she slid off the stool.

His arms wrapped around her for a moment, until they reached the stairs, where he sent her up ahead. It wasn’t just so he could watch her swaying hips and delectable bum as she went—he had wards to set behind them, after all—but it certainly didn’t hurt. He wasn’t far behind, though, and they were leaning against one another as they reached the bedroom and began to shed the layers of clothes they’d donned to traverse the breezy beach at night.

Hermione looked around the room a moment, and out one hand on her weekend bag, before shrugging and climbing into his bed in nothing more than her knickers. That was more than fine with him, as he removed everything but his pants and climbed in with her, curling his body around hers almost reflexively.

“Did you set an alarm?” She mumbled before kissing the hand that had come to rest against her clavicle.

“It is Saturday. I thought we might indulge ourselves.” He shifted just a bit closer to her, sharing his warmth, as she was almost perpetually chilly.

“Mmm, I like your—“ her words were cut off by a yawn, though something that might have been “thinking” warbled out of her. Then she hummed contentedly and burrowed a bit deeper into his indulgently soft bedding. He gave his witch a squeeze, then took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Though neither of them had expected to find themselves here, they’d found something magical together.


End file.
